Message targets new market

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Chatham-Kent Tourism has joined the ranks of the big leagues in North American tourism promotion.

Tourism manager Joy Sim will travel to Boston Tuesday to visit the headquarters of Road Scholar, a high-end and high-yield tour company that targets people 50-plus with programs designed for life-long learners.

Sim will meet with Road Scholar product development staff and educate the company's call centre staff on the Chatham-Kent experience.

"We are very excited about the tourism potential of this new relationship,'' Sim told The Daily news Tuesday. "We hope to maximize our reach into the 50-plus market and target an entirely new audience of potential visitors.''

Sim's trip to Boston is being organized by the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership Corporation.

She said local programming available for both black history and birding in Chatham-Kent are a perfect fit for Road Scholar.

"We've spent the past six years working on promoting our products to this company,'' she said. "The potential in terms of generating new tourism is endless.''

Sims said Chatham-Kent's black history and birding are featured in the Canadian edition of the 2012 Road Scholar magazine.

According to a company brochure, Road Scholar is for life-long learners.

The company says that while interest in life-long learning should be defined by one's outlook, not one's birth date, it develops and offers programs specifically for people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond.

The company rate programs by activity level so that each participant can select programs best suited, not only to their intellectual curiosity, but also for their physical ability and comfort.

One of the programs featured in the latest edition of the Road Scholar is a Niagara to Chatham history and heritage adventure in Southwestern Ontario including visits to Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site and the Buxton Historic Site.